The Felicity of Aspectual For-Phrases – Part 1: Homogeneity

Abstract

This paper is the first in a series of two papers presenting recent developments concerning the interaction between aspectual classes of predicates and the semantics of aspectual for-phrases. Aspectual for-phrases can felicitously modify stative and activity predicates, but not (basic) accomplishment and achievement predicates. Earlier literature proposed that this is because aspectual for-phrases must modify predicates which are homogeneous– meaning that the predicate spreads appropriately to subintervals – and it proposed a notion of homogeneity which is appropriate for stative predicates. We argue in this first paper that neither the earlier literature, nor later proposals have managed to come up with an adequate account of the felicity of aspectual for-phrases with eventive predicates, and that, in particular, accomplishment and achievement predicates with bare arguments and iterative constructions remain challenges that these accounts cannot properly meet. We show that the problem lies in the notion of homogeneity for eventive predicates: the semantic tradition has provided us with static notions of homogeneity – insensitive to the arrow of time – but what is needed is a dynamic notion.